Budget Reconciliation: Tracking the 2025 Trump Tax Cuts
Our experts are providing the latest details and analysis of proposed federal tax policy changes.
10 min read
Featured Articles
Expiring TCJA Tax Provisions in 2026 Would Produce Substantial Tax Hike across the US
At the end of 2025, the individual tax provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expire all at once. Without congressional action, most taxpayers will see a notable tax increase relative to current policy in 2026.
4 min read
Tax Calculator: How the TCJA’s Expiration Will Affect You
Unless Congress acts, Americans are in for a tax hike in 2026.
3 min read
“Big Beautiful Bill” House GOP Tax Plan: Preliminary Details and Analysis
Our preliminary analysis finds the tax provisions included in the May 12 text would increase long-run GDP by 0.6 percent and reduce federal tax revenue by $4.0 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a conventional basis before added interest costs.
7 min read
House Tax Package Could Double Economic Growth Impact by Prioritizing Permanence for TCJA Business Provisions
As the current tax package stands, the House’s use of temporary policy is leaving most of the economic growth opportunities on the table.
2 min read
Expensing: It Pays to Be Permanent
As lawmakers work through the reconciliation process, permanently enacting improvements to deductions for capital investment and research and development (R&D) costs will create an economically powerful package.
8 min read
How 2026 Tax Brackets Would Change if the TCJA Expires
If Congress allows the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) to expire as scheduled, most aspects of the individual income tax would undergo substantial changes, resulting in more than 62 percent of tax filers experiencing tax increases in 2026.
3 min read
Making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Permanent: Economic, Revenue, and Distributional Effects
Permanently extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would boost long-run economic output by 1.1 percent, the capital stock by 0.7 percent, wages by 0.5 percent, and hours worked by 847,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
6 min read
House GOP’s Approach to the IRA Clean Energy Tax Credits: Five Things to Know
Tax simplification has two aspects. The first is a code without a mess of targeted provisions for various social policy goals. The second is a code with provisions that are simple and easy to comply with. The bill succeeds at the first, but fails at the second.
7 min read
Four Paths for Inflation Reduction Act Reforms
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced a series of new targeted tax breaks, many of which seem to be much more expensive than originally forecasted. Understandably, repealing these subsidies is a key option for policymakers looking to pay to extend the expiring broader tax cuts passed in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
7 min read
Considering Potential International Corporate Tax Reforms in the US
Tax legislation in 2025 may have good reason to address international corporate income taxes, because of scheduled changes slated to go into effect or because of international developments like the Pillar Two agreement.
63 min read
Cleaning Up the Tax Code Could Raise Trillions for Tax Reform
As Republicans look for ways to offset the budgetary cost of extending the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and potentially enacting other tax cuts, the latest estimates indicate several trillion dollars could be raised by reducing tax credits and other preferences in the tax code.
5 min read
All About That Base(line)
If lawmakers are serious about pro-growth policies and fiscal responsibility, they will need to put policies forward that achieve those goals. Simply adjusting the baseline doesn’t reduce actual deficits in the coming years.
7 min read
Growth Should Be a Key Consideration if Corporate SALT Is Limited
Lawmakers should prioritize pro-growth tax policies and use the least economically damaging offsets to make the legislation fiscally responsible. If lawmakers choose to use C-SALT, they should carefully consider the economic trade-off with permanent, pro-growth tax cuts that support investment and innovation in the US.
7 min read
Questions About Tax Cuts, Tariffs, and Reconciliation After the Election
Fiscal pressures are likely to weigh heavily on lawmakers as they craft a tax reform package. That increased pressure could result in well-designed tax reform that prioritizes economic growth, simplicity, and stability, or it could encourage budget gimmicks and economically harmful offsets. Lawmakers should avoid the latter.
8 min read
Behind the Numbers: Budget Shenanigans and the National Debt
What happens to your taxes when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires on January 1, 2026? In this episode, we explore the potential tax hikes facing millions of Americans and the debate over measuring the budgetary impacts of extending tax cuts.
Picking the Right Budgetary Offsets Key to Tax Reform Success
In a perilous economic and fiscal environment, with instability created by Trump’s trade war and publicly held debt on track to surpass the highest levels ever recorded within five years, a lot rides on how Republicans navigate tax and spending reforms in reconciliation.
6 min read
Congressional Policymakers Should Tread Carefully When Weighing New Corporate SALT Deduction Limits
While capping C-SALT has superficial appeal in perceived parity with personal limits, it rests on flawed assumptions about the nature of individual and corporate income taxes.
7 min read
House Budget Resolution Aims to Balance Tax Cut and Spending Reduction Goals
The House Budget Committee has released a budget resolution that specifies large reductions in both taxes and spending over the next decade, paving the way to extend the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and potentially cut other taxes.
6 min read
New Study Finds TCJA Strongly Boosted Corporate Investment
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the largest corporate tax reform in a generation, lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, temporarily allowing full expensing for short-lived assets (referred to as bonus depreciation), and overhauling the international tax code.
6 min read
Tax Reform Offsets Shouldn’t Offset Economic Growth
Pro-growth tax reform that does not add to the deficit will require tough choices, but whether to raise the corporate tax rate is not one of them. If lawmakers want to craft fiscally responsible and pro-growth tax reform, a higher corporate tax rate simply does not fit into the puzzle.
3 min read
Will Your Taxes Go Up? Best- and Worst-case Scenarios for Tax Reform in 2025
What will the future of tax policy look like? In this episode, we dive into the critical challenges and opportunities looming on the horizon, especially with major tax cuts set to expire, which could increase taxes for 62 percent of filers.
New Efforts on Taxing Endowments Raise Questions on Neutrality and Revenue Collection
Republican policymakers in Congress are considering options to raise revenue as part of their expected legislative package in 2025. One such option involves raising the tax rate on university endowments first put in place as part of the TCJA in 2017.
4 min read
Video: Tax Reform Is More Than Just the Rate
Tax policy is almost always a balancing act between the tax rate – how much someone pays – and the tax base – who or what is being taxed.
All Related Articles
Lawmakers Could Pay for Reconciliation While Improving the Tax Code
With corporate and individual rate hikes potentially out of the Build Back Better (BBB) reconciliation package, lawmakers are weighing alternative options to raise revenue. Rather than come up with untested proposals and complicated changes to the tax base, they should prioritize options that raise revenue while improving the structure of the tax code.
4 min read
Proposed Minimum Tax on Book Income Would Hit Stock-Based Compensation
Raising taxes on stock-based compensation through a book income tax will disadvantage this form of compensation and produce more complexity in the tax system without providing benefits to workers.
5 min read
Funding for Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Spending Plan Is Unstable and Unsustainable
One has to wonder how stable or sustainable the Democrats’ spending program can be if it must rely so heavily on the taxes paid by such a small number of taxpayers as in the top 1 percent.
5 min read
Proposal for Reporting Requirements for Financial Institutions Misses the Mark
Reducing the tax gap is a good idea, but the reporting requirements for financial institutions could be better-targeted at the problem at hand.
4 min read
What’s Going on with the Child Tax Credit Debate?
President Biden expanded and fundamentally changed the Child Tax Credit (CTC) for one year in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) passed in March 2021. Policymakers are now deciding the future of the expansion as part of the proposed reconciliation package, but a wide range of estimates for the effects of a permanent expansion is confusing the debate.
7 min read
Higher Taxes Under House Ways and Means Plan Emphasize Need for Corporate Integration
Under the House Ways and Means plan to raise taxes on corporations and individuals, the integrated tax rate on corporate income would rise to the third highest in the OECD. To reduce this burden, policymakers could explore integrating the individual and corporate tax systems.
8 min read
Should Tax Policy Play a Role in Tobacco Harm Reduction?
In an effort to raise roughly $100 billion, the House proposal would double cigarette taxes and increase all other tobacco and nicotine taxes to comparable rates—a strategy with severe unintended consequences.
5 min read
Which Industries Would the Tax Hikes Target?
Using Tax Foundation’s Multinational Tax Model, we estimate the effective tax rates on controlled foreign corporation (CFC) profits under current law and under each of the proposed plans for business tax hikes.
9 min read
Placing the House Build Back Better Act Tax Increases in Historical Context
If the spending in the $3.5 trillion budget resolution were financed entirely from tax increases, it would rival as a share of GDP the tax increases used to finance World War II and the Korean War.
3 min read
Federal Policy is Hard
Federal policy is hard. Federal health care policy during reconciliation while governing with razor-thin margins is really, really hard. We break down the debate on Capitol Hill over drug pricing and what the tradeoffs would be of having the federal government set prescription drug prices.
Federal Plastics Tax Is Not a Good Revenue Raiser
One of the Senate’s proposals to pay for the Build Back Better Act is a federal excise tax on virgin plastics, which are plastics that are not reprocessed or recovered.
4 min read
Carbon Tax: Weighing the Options for Financing Reconciliation
A carbon tax would be a less economically harmful pay-for than either personal or corporate income tax hikes and a more efficient way to reduce carbon emissions than green energy tax credits, but would come with other trade-offs.
4 min read
History of Attempted Changes to Step-Up in Basis Shows Perilous Road Ahead
As Congress considers President Biden’s proposal to tax unrealized capital gains at death, the history of previous efforts suggests it faces a perilous road ahead. Lawmakers must resolve tricky design and implementation details that derailed past attempts to change how capital gains are treated when assets are passed from one generation to the next.
4 min read
U.S. Corporate Income Faces Third-Highest Integrated Tax Rate in OECD Under Ways and Means Plan
Under the House Ways and Means tax plan, the United States would tax corporate income at the third-highest integrated tax rate among rich nations, averaging 56.6 percent.
3 min read
Choose Your Own Adventure: Global Minimum Tax Edition
Over the course of the last year, it has become clear that Democratic lawmakers want to change U.S. international tax rules. However, as proposals have surfaced in recent weeks, there are clear divides among various proposals.
5 min read
Latest White House Report Tells Incomplete Story on Average Tax Rates for Wealthy
The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)’s recent report estimates the average federal individual income tax rate for the top 400 wealthiest households in the U.S to be 8.2 percent, lower than typically estimated for top earners.
4 min read
Taxing Decisions, 2021: Minisode 1
We discuss where the reconciliation package on Capitol Hill stands and talk through recent Tax Foundation modeling, which found that the plan may not have the economic boost its proponents have claimed.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Ways and Means Plan
The latest version of the Biden Build Back Better agenda, released last week by the House Ways and Means committee, is dense, with too many provisions to flesh out completely. Here’s a rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly of it.
7 min read
Federal Tobacco Tax Proposal Could Result in 50% Increase in State Taxes
The potential federal tax increase of over 1,600 percent on dipping tobacco as a result of the House Democrats’ proposal could result in state taxes and retail prices increasing by more than 50 percent in certain states.
4 min read
Yes, the US Tax Code Is Progressive
As Congress considers several tax proposals designed to raise taxes on high-income earners, it’s worth considering the distribution of the existing tax code.
3 min read